Leofwine_draca
What could have been a good cheesy B-movie in the vein of COMMANDO turns out to be an absolutely awful, devastatingly bad attempt at making an action film by people who clearly haven't got a clue about the genre. It's a brain-dead effort chronicling the 'adventures' of an ex-marine, trying to bust the bad guys who have kidnapped his wife. A simple plot, and an excuse for lots of action you might think. Well, you'd be wrong. In fact there isn't much action in a film that is instead so badly written that my dog could have done better. Imagine playground dialogue, preposterous situations, and a total disregard for the laws of physics and you have THE MARINE, an all-new low in cinema.The saddest thing is that this film has had quite a budget spent on it. More than, say, something like Seagal's latest straight-to-DVD release. It's backed by WWE films, who I imagine won't be financing any more productions, and the target demographic appears to be black American teenagers, as the film is chock full of lame racial humour and bizarre music that doesn't really fit in. As the hero, John Cena is wooden beyond belief, offering no empathy into his character, no reason to back him or support him in his actions. He's a typical muscle man without a brain, all brawn and no acting skills. Opposite Cena is an actor who used to be good, before his career took a nose dive into the kind of B-movie pap that fills the shelves these days: it's none other than Robert Patrick, complete with a TERMINATOR in-joke at his expense. While Cena underacts, Patrick totally overdoes it, and he's never anything other than laughable. The rest of the cast are also pretty lame, especially Parker as comic relief and Carlson as the token blonde bimbo.Don't get me wrong, I love B-movie action films but this one really takes the biscuit. The only halfway decent moment is a car chase about halfway through that's totally overblown but nevertheless quite enjoyable. That's about all the action the film offers, and if watching a guy running through the swamps endlessly seems like your idea of fun, then go ahead and check this out. The set-piece in the wooden shack is badly handled and the laughable climax so, well, laughable that even the entertainment value suffers. Of course they can't resist one more cheesy back-from-the-dead shock but I was in no mood for forgiveness by the time this arose. The fight scenes are poorly handled, cutting away from the hits and without any skill on the parts of the actors. This is really bad stuff, terrible in fact, with only a couple of decent explosions to recommend it. C-grade trash...
LeonLouisRicci
Here Are Just Some of the Reasons You Should Check Out This Movie
...Discharge the Marine......More Unbelievable Than Transporter 2......Horrible and Stupid!... One of the Worst Movies I Can Remember Viewing......Trash Quality But Not in a Funny Way......John Cena Fan, But Damn This Was Horrible......An Abomination......Oooow! My God, but Not in a Good Way......This Movie Sucks......Stick to Wrestling John......The Director Assumes We are all Idiots......Even Though I Didn't Pay to See This Movie, I Want My Money Back......Jeezo, I Need Some Whiskey......This has to be the Worst Movie Ever Made......Just Horrible!......A Piece of Utter Sh**t!......Very, Very, Bad......This Film has Performed a Miracle, It Both Sucks and Blows......Waste of Time and Money......Redefines the Word Awful...
I Have Sena Nuff......Horrible Movie......OMG! Words Almost Fail Me......Worst Movie Ever Made......The Suckiest of the Sucks......Waste of Time, Shame on U if U Watch It......Another Lame Attempt at Creating an Action Hero......This is What Happens When a Movie is Written by Guys with "Roid Rage"......The Preceding Comments Were Brought to You by the Summaries From Your Friends Here at IMDb
...Add to That, As of This Date, The Movie has 3 Sequels
...So Check This One Out...You Will Not Be Disappointed.
Prismark10
Well since the late 1980s several wrestling stars have taken to the big screen with variable success. Dwayne Johnson seems to be standout actor from a roll call that includes Roddy Piper and Steve Borden amongst others.WWE has started their own film division in order to promote some of its bigger wrestling stars hence here we have John Cena playing an ex-marine going after a group of trigger happy diamond thieves who are on the run and have kidnapped his wife.Its never explained why the thieves happen to kill police and other members of the public when they should be keeping a low profile. As always the gang tends to bicker among themselves, one of them even shoots the other for unfathomable reasons.Cena is in hot pursuit of the bad guys and nothing seems to stop him, he really is like the terminator which also happens to be the best joke made in the film in the presence of Robert (T-1000) Patrick.Given the fact that Cena has all the presence and acting ability of a tree trunk its only left to the bad guys to inject some zest to the film. Patrick adds some humour here and there and Anthony Ray Parker gives a surreal explanation why he does not like rock candy.The film has some big explosions which are very well done, there are some good action scenes which I expect Cena to excel at but he brings actually no personality to the film. As this is a dumb old action film you would want the star to have some charisma to carry the film and Cena is totally outside his comfort zone.
Robert J. Maxwell
At first I thought it might be a live-action movie, then I realized it was all a very realistically done cartoon.It's just plan terrible. It includes nothing you haven't seen a dozen or more times before. John Cena is a tall muscle man, all splanchnocranium and bulging biceps. He's taut but not graceful. It reminds me of an observation an anthropologist, Alice Brues, made of the gorilla: "He can kill anything he can catch but he can't catch anything." He and the other characters do a fairly decent job of acting, considering that they are nothing more than computer-generated images and their speech is digitally fabricated.The direction is worse. It belong back in the 1960s when seeing action filmed in slow motion was a novelty instead of a hoary cliché. Among the things you've seen before is the pursuit at high speed, several exploding fireballs, a room peppered with bullets, one bad guy shooting another because there may be the hint of betrayal, the good guy tied up and beaten, and -- well, everything. There is wit in some of the lines. It's as if the writers were dying to break out of this action flick straightjacket and write the comedy that the movie really is.The award for best performance and best lines goes to -- envelope, please -- Robert Patrick as the smooth, butyraceous leader of the greasy pack. He's always carefully dressed and polite. Oh, he knows his way around.The plot: the gang kidnaps Cena's wife. He pursues them and gets her back. That's more than the plot deserves.